Most of the essays were pretty decent high-school-level essays that used Zelda mechanics to introduce you to a variety of philosophy textbook topics. The books didn't really pick apart Zelda all that deeply, but it was more of the authors' intention to use Zelda as a springboard into philosophy rather than critique Zelda itself.
For the most part, the essays were pretty good, minus one poorly-researched one which happened to make long-renounced accusations against Nietzsche re: his supposed anti-semitism.

If you are interested in the promise of philosophy and love the Zelda series, I highly recommend this book. If you're already well-versed in philosophy and were hoping for some deep critiques of the series, you will unfortunately have to look elsewhere.

Not as good as I hoped. It was trying to be scholarly, but didn't quite make it. Didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.

There is no deeper meaning behind Link not existing when the game is turned off. You are reading too much into it.

I am not sure what exactly I expected, but, for the most part, I didn't get it. Most of the philosophical discussions in this book are linked to the Legend of Zelda by the most tenuous of threads, relate the content of the game to philosophy in a way that is so meta that all meaning is lost, or are simply uninteresting.

In this book, Zelda is either being shoehorned into the philosophy or the philosophy is being shoehorned into Zelda. Many of the examinations also ignore or are ignorant of game design considerations in favor of philosophical considerations. This basically invalidates their work, as the design of the Legend of Zelda is an intrinsic part of its existence.

There was a single exception. The Triforce and the Doctrine of the Mean, written by Patrick Dugan is a fantastic example of what a volume like this should contain. He examines the purpose and usage of each part of the Triforce within the world created by the Zelda games and judges them using Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean. This is interesting because it is confined to the game world, (it does not try to relate the Triforce to something outside of Hyrule) and it contains interesting observations about the way the characters in the Legend of Zelda are depicted based on how they use their piece of the Triforce. I would give this chapter by itself 3-4 stars and I would recommend you read only this chapter in a bookstore, rather than buying this book.

Fun, if not extremely thought-provoking. Drawing connections from Hegel and Hume to space theory and feminism, the essays cover a lot of ground without ever moving away from short colloquial musings. Worth a read just to see if one of the writers has made a connection between Zelda and your favorite theory!

Feminism. Time travel. Best possible worlds. This books cover a wide range of philosophical theories while using examples from the series of videogames. Who knew?

Overall, this book was good. The individual authors wrote, for the most part, insightful articles about a series that was never truly meant to picked apart so philosophically. The philosophy itself is good. However, some of the knowledge of the writers about the actual series is occasionally lacking. Most wrote about only one game in the series, which is fine, but sometimes when they make generalizations about the series, and the way the games connect, they lack the understanding I would expect.

Not really going to rate it. It wasn't really what I hoping for. More of a book that uses things in Zelda to help explain philosophy. I really wanted more of a book that either talked about the philosophy in Zelda or talked about how Zelda and philosophy intertwine.

Just wanted something more than, "It’s About the Journey, not the Destination" and Zelda uses this by making you walk every where.

''What would we gain if our virtual spaces required the same amount of time and effort to get to know as the real world, if the world of Zelda stretched endlessly in all directions or if a chessboard had an infinite number of squares? Our virtual spaces, whether we are talking about World of Warcraft or The Settlers of Catan, scale down reality so we can admire it, study it, and shake it up like a snowglobe.''